‘The Song of Achilles’ by Madeline Miller
Posted on May 16, 2012 by Heather Seggel in Fiction, Reviews
The Song of Achilles (Ecco) is a revisiting of the Trojan War as told in The Iliad, with a love story at its center. It folds sensual details into every chapter, page, and paragraph so densely, the words themselves occasionally threaten to blossom on the page. This is a good thing, deliciously, richly so. (more…)
‘The Heart’s History’ by Lewis DeSimone
Posted on May 15, 2012 by Trebor Healey in Fiction, Reviews
From the outset this is a beautifully-written and well-crafted book. DeSimone is clearly a writer who considers each sentence, and the result is good, clean, succinct prose. As we’re introduced to each character, DeSimone deftly illustrates their key character traits. There is no awkward dialog or clunky inserted descriptions in later scenes. One feels in good hands as he proceeds through the story, which spans a four year period (2002-2006) in the lives of a group of close-knit gay friends in Boston. (more…)
‘A Queer and Pleasant Danger’ by Kate Bornstein
Posted on May 13, 2012 by Sassafras Lowrey in Nonfiction, Reviews
Transgender icon Kate Bornstein’s long awaited memoir A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology and leaves twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today (Beacon Press) gifts readers with a brutally beautiful intimate look into the life of one of our communities most brilliant and canonical writers. Going deeper than Gender Outlaws, Bornstein drops the theory and tells the stories that led to her becoming the performer, activist, and leader so many of us have come to know today. Bornstein brings her readers through the childhood of a boy who desperately wanted to be daddy’s little girl who struggled to fit into his family, community, and body into Scientology, and later her decision to transition and her journey into an S/M Dyke. Bornstein has truly outdone herself with this long awaited memoir. (more…)
‘Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood Among Black Women’ by Mignon R. Moore
Posted on May 13, 2012 by Rachel Wexelbaum in Nonfiction, Reviews
There are approximately 39 million people who check “Black or African-American” on their Census forms. Nearly sixty percent of those individuals identify as female. If Census numbers provide an accurate reflection of a population, then one could imagine that Black or African-American women would be highly visible in their own communities, as well as others. The Census does not do as well as job when it comes to counting unmarried partner households by race. While women were more likely than men to note that they lived in a household with a female partner, data on unmarried partner households is organized by region rather than race. For this reason, the true count of lesbian-headed households—as well as lesbian couples with children—remains an unknown. (more…)
‘When She Woke’ by Hillary Jordan
Posted on May 8, 2012 by Julie R. Enszer in Reviews, Speculative
At the beginning of When She Woke (2012 Lambda Literary Award finalist), Hannah Payne, the protagonist in Hillary Jordan’s new dystopian novel, wakes up in state confinement. Her body has been transformed by “melachroming,” a biological process that turns a convicted criminal’s skin a different color. Hannah’s body is red, the color designated for people who commit murder. Hannah’s crime? She had an abortion; in the not so distant future, abortion is murder. (more…)
‘Ninety Days’ by Bill Clegg
Posted on May 8, 2012 by Michael Klein in Nonfiction, Reviews
When I first got sober 27 years ago, the furthest thing from my mind was to write a book about it – particularly a book that faced those first 90 days which were such a maelstrom of anxiety and inability to focus that I thought I would go out of my mind even before the chance of relapse could occur. I also thought, for a blessedly short minute, that I might even be straight. Bill Clegg, on the other hand, never experienced that particular form of writer’s block and has managed to write not just a memoir about his first 90 days (which took two and a half years to complete) but, also a prequel to it (The Portrait of the Artist as a Crack Addict). (more…)
‘My Movie’ by David Pratt
Posted on May 6, 2012 by Howard G. Williams in Fiction, Reviews
David Pratt offers an assortment of both experimental and conventional narratives in his new fourteen-story collection, My Movie (Chelsea Station Editions). The experimental stories generate some noteworthy rewards, but it is the more traditional stories that are much more appealing and fulfilling in scope. Told from a character’s unique point of view, the conventional stories present a series of clear character driven narratives that cannily encapsulate small revelatory events and personal revelations that lead to gratifying endings. (more…)
‘David Hockney: A Rake’s Progress’ by Christopher Simon Sykes
Posted on May 5, 2012 by Nels P. Highberg in Bio/Memoir, Reviews
I doubt I am the only middle-aged gay man in the contemporary United States whose first memories of British artist David Hockney’s work center on his paintings from the late-60s and early-70s featuring swimming pools. He captured the water’s undulations as reflected in the bright Los Angeles sunshine with a range of deep blues and greens punctuated by a pop of yellow or red. What really caught my eye, however, were the men who appeared in this painting or that, especially the nude backside of his then-partner Peter Schlesinger rising out of the pool. Decadent was not a word I would have conjured at the time, but that is how this world seemed to me. This nude man was outside, after all, even if he was in the backyard of a private home. There was no hiding, no secrecy, no invisibility in this world. I never forgot it. (more…)
‘Freeing Ourselves: A Guide to Health and Self Love for Brown Bois’ by The Brown Boi Project
Posted on May 2, 2012 by TT Jax in Nonfiction, Reviews
The Brown Boi Project’s Freeing Ourselves: A Guide to Health and Self-Love for Brown Bois is a beautifully constructed, deeply thoughtful, and powerfully political health guide by and for masculine of center/transgender/gender non-conforming people of color. Intentionally slender, the book is full of poetry; exquisite photography; safer sex information; adaptive device how-tos; nutritional, herbal and exercise advice; poignant personal stories; healthcare histories that centralize the experiences of people of color; exposures of class and racial injustices in healthcare and/or prison systems; and thorough analysis of the impact of oppressions as lived trauma experiences. (more…)
‘Wingshooters’ by Nina Revoyr
Posted on May 2, 2012 by Sara Rauch in Fiction, Reviews
Nina Revoyr, author of The Necessary Hunger, The Age of Dreaming, and Southland (Lambda Literary Award, 2003), chronicles the struggles of a young bi-racial girl growing up in small-town Wisconsin. (more…)
